Michael Pearce - The Last Cut

‘Aye. Babikr.’

‘I’d never have thought it of him!’ said Ferguson.

‘It just shows how you can be deceived in people,’ said Macrae.

‘Aye.’

They drank their coffee dispiritedly.

‘He’s always been quiet!’

‘I thought he just liked to get on with it.’

‘Well, he does like to get on with it. We’ve never had any complaints, have we?’

Ferguson shook his head.

‘Babikr!’ he said bitterly.

‘They gave you his name?’ said Owen.

‘Aye.’

‘Does he know? That they’ve given his name?’

‘Must do.’

‘Then he’ll be off unless we-Where is he?’

‘They’ll be down by the regulator.’

The men were taking their morning break. They were sitting up on the bank, unusually quiet.

There was no need to ask about Babikr. He was sitting apart from the others, his knees drawn up to his chin, arms round them, head bowed.

Owen went up to him.

‘Babikr,’ he said, you must come with me.’

‘You know why I have taken you?’

‘Yes, Effendi.’

‘You broke into the store?’

‘Yes, Effendi.’

‘And took the dynamite?’

‘Yes, Effendi.’

‘And what did you do with it?’

‘I put it beside the gate. In the culvert.’

And detonated it?’

Babikr nodded his head wordlessly.

‘Why, Babikr?’

Babikr shook his head.

‘Was it because of something Macrae Effendi had done to you?’

‘No, no, Effendi-’

‘Or Ferguson Effendi?’

‘No, Effendi,’ said Babikr, distressed.

‘Someone else, perhaps? Here at the barrage?’

The man shook his head.

‘Or in the Department?’

Again the shake.

‘Why then, Babikr?’

He waited a while and then repeated the question. The man did not reply.

‘No one does a thing like this without reason,’ said Owen. ‘What was your reason?’

Babikr just tightened his lips.

‘Perhaps something bad had been done to you?’

Babikr shook his head firmly.

‘No, Effendi. It was not that.’

‘Then what was it?’

‘The Effendis have always been good to me.’

‘Someone else?’

‘No one else.’

Owen sat back bewildered.

‘Is it that you are angry against the Khedive?’

‘The Khedive?’

It was almost as if the man had never heard of him.

‘Or the British, perhaps? Come, man, you may say it.’ Owen smiled. ‘There are plenty who are.’

Babikr shook his head.

‘You are not-?’ Owen wondered how to put it. With a more educated man he might have said ‘a Nationalist’. Or if uneducated, in Cairo he might have asked whether he was a member of one of the ‘clubs’. Or even of one of the gangs. But this man was a simple fellah, up, for a while, from the country.

‘You are not, perhaps, a follower of Mustapha Kamil?’

Mustapha Kamil had been for a time the charismatic leader of the Nationalist movement. He was now dead but many national-istically-minded Egyptians still identified with him. At least they would have heard of him. Babikr, however, clearly had not.

‘But why did you do it, Babikr? Surely you can say?’

Babikr, however, could, or would, not. In the end, Owen shrugged and let it rest. The man had confessed. That was all that was needed.

It would be helpful, though, to have some corroborative evidence. He asked the man about breaking into the stores. On this he was quite prepared to talk. Yes, he had come in one night and cut the hole. He described it so circumstantially as to put it beyond doubt that he had done it. Vague, as all fellahin, about dates, he was not able to specify the day. It had not been the same day as he had blown up the regulator. It would have been too much for one day.

He had hidden the dynamite for a night or two in a disused gadwal before taking it to the regulator and using it.

And his tool-kit?

Here Babikr needed no encouragement to talk. It had been stolen.

Stolen?

Yes, that very night. In the Gardens. While he was taking the dynamite to its hiding-place. It had been too much to carry both it and the tool-kit so he had hidden the tool-kit temporarily, intending to come back for it. When he had done so, he had been unable to find it. He had come back again the following morning, thinking he had just made a mistake about the place, and had looked for it thoroughly. In the end he had been forced to realize that somebody had taken it.

‘While I was there, Effendi, in the Gardens. In the Gardens! I tell you, Effendi, there are thieves everywhere!’

There were, indeed, and Owen had a pretty good idea of one of them. He sent for the ghaffir.

The ghaffir denied it vehemently.

‘Would I do a thing like that, Effendi?’

‘Almost certainly.’

The ghaffir still denied it. Owen had his house searched. A small saw was found which Babikr identified as his. He asked after the rest of the tools. After some prevarication the ghaffir admitted he had sold them. Owen sent men to recover them.

The ghaffir changed tack.

He had done it, he said, only to punish the intruder.

‘You can leave punishment to me,’ said Owen, and detailed the consequences that would follow if he had any more trouble from the ghaffir.

‘So,’ said Owen, you were watching all the time?’

Not all the time, said the ghaffir. The workman had already started when he got there. As he was coming through the trees, quietly, he had heard suspicious noises.

‘Then, Effendi, I crept. I feared there might be many, and I, but one. So I went forward with circumspection. And, lo, there was a man crouched at the back of the hut.’

‘Crouched? Not lying down? I thought he had made a burrow?’

‘No, no, that was the Lizard Man. He came later.’

‘Did you see him?’

‘No, no, Effendi. That would have been very unwise.’

‘But you did see a man crouching?’

‘Yes, Effendi. And I lay there and watched him. And after a while he stopped working and crawled through into the store to see that all was well for the Lizard Man. Then he came out and gathered his tools and took them and hid them in a gadwal. And then he went off into the trees.’

‘Carrying something?’

‘I could not see, Effendi. The night was dark. And I thought, I shall play a trick on him. To punish him. Yes, that’s right. To punish him. So I stole forward and found the tools and took them away with me. Ho, ho, I thought, that will teach you a lesson!’

‘Fair is fair,’ said Owen, ‘and if you take mine, I take yours. Is that it?’

The ghaffir looked at him, surprised.

‘Well, yes, Effendi. That was it, more or less.’

‘And you did not think to seize the man?’

‘Well, no, Effendi. He was bigger than I.’

‘Were you not armed?’

‘Ah, yes, Effendi. But so might he be.’

‘Nor did you think of reporting it the next morning?’

‘By then, Effendi, it was surely water under the bridge.’ And, besides, you had the tools?’

‘Well-’

And thought, no doubt, that was punishment enough?’ ’Exactly so, Effendi,’ agreed the ghaffir, relieved.

Owen had one last question.

‘You know the workmen; and you saw the man. Which of them was it?’

After some hum-ing and haw-ing, the ghaffir identified Babikr.

‘Well, that clinches it,’ said Macrae.

‘Aye,’ said Ferguson despondently.

‘Ye’d never have thought it.’

‘One of ours!’

‘I still can’t understand it. Why would he do a thing like that?’

‘You think you know them,’ said Ferguson, shaking his head.

‘Well, you do know them,’ said Owen. ‘You reckoned that if you put it to them, they’d come out with it. And you were right.’